4 Ways to Send E-Mails Without Annoying Others

Does everyone read every e-mail you send? For most of us that’s the goal, but without realizing it you may be doing a few things that keep others from opening your e-mails.

Unlike the list of e-mail mistakes I published in another post, here’s a list of things you can do to ensure that others enjoy, not dread, your e-mails.

1. Use bcc.

Some people don’t realize that bcc means blind carbon copy, which means don’t make everyone on your e-mail list mad by listing their email addresses in your mass mailings. In the “To” section, enter your email address and in the “bcc” section, enter everyone else’s addresses. When you send a mass e-mail, no one else’s address shows up except for yours.

2. Click send once.

I’m one of the most impatient people I know. When an elevator seems to take too long to get to my floor, I push the button over and over to make the elevator arrive faster (which by the way, doesn’t work even though it makes me feel better to think it does). The same theory doesn’t work when pushing send. Instead of making your e-mail arrive sooner, pushing send several times makes the same email land in someone’s mailbox many times.

3. Don’t include attachments in e-mails to strangers.

If someone has no idea who you are, he or she probably won’t feel comfortable downloading your attachment. If you’ve ever had a computer virus, you know what I mean. It takes having to pay someone one time to cure a virus to realize it’s not worth downloading a suspicious file. If possible, include the information from the attachment in the body of your e-mail and then include the attachment. Even if the person doesn’t open the attachment, they’ll see the information you want them to read.

4. Limit the number of “funny” e-mails you send to friends and clients.

A joke e-mail that makes you laugh all day isn’t necessarily funny to everyone else. In fact, some online jokes can be more annoying than they are funny. If you send too many of those types of e-mails, when you do have an important message, the person you’ve sent it to may delete it without reading it.

If you’re not doing the things on this list on a regular basis, keep in mind that it’s not too late to change your e-mailing ways.

What do you avoid doing when you send e-mails?

Comments

Ah, Lisa, your #4 hit home for me. It’s one of the reasons I took up blogging. (Not for the jokes- but…) Because it cut down the number of items I shared with my friends and clients. Instead of receiving 30 or 40 eMails a day (yup!), now they only get that many a week.

Blogging definitely is a more efficient way to spread the news (and the occasional joke). Now that you don’t have to send so many e-mails every day, you probably have more free time. 🙂Lisa recently posted..4 Ways to Send E-Mails Without Annoying Others

For sure Lisa limiting those crazy, funny, political, chain emails is something that could actually be shared on Facebook and leave our inbox less cluttered, lol You make some really good points.Lynn Brown recently posted..Top 5 Tips On How Much Time To Spend on Social Media

You’re right…it’s good to have a place to share info other than in emails. Most of us get plenty of emails we need to read, that we don’t need extra emails we’ll never have time to read.Lisa recently posted..4 Ways to Send E-Mails Without Annoying Others

Loved the impatience mode of hitting the elevator button more than once 😉 Do I do that (she says in the Urket voice)
I’ve stopped opening emails from my one brother because of all the political rhetoric, even though few and far between. But one thing that piece of action does is to save me from angry replies.
And here’s one you may or may not have thought of… I open emails from those email lists I have joined and quickly scan them, yet don’t need what they’re offering at the moment, so don’t give them a second glance.
Ahhh, the sheer joys of emails…great tips all around, Lisa.

Great tip, Peggy Lee. It’s easy to open an email, not deal with it and then open it again later. It’s a waste of time and energy. Thanks for the reminder not to do that.Lisa recently posted..4 Ways to Send E-Mails Without Annoying Others

As far as email attachments go (#3), I hesitate to even send those to the people I know. Not that I feel they are going to think I am trying to send them a virus. More because I fear the attachment will cause the email to be flagged as spam, to never be viewed by the intended recipient. Then if I don’t get a prompt response, I think that this fear has been realized.Marshall Davis recently posted..Talking Small Biz with Fran Reisner

I’ve never looked at it that way, but you have a good point. Most of the time I try to include info in the body of an e-mail. Otherwise I let the person know I’ll be sending an attachment, especially if the files are large.Lisa recently posted..Bare Essentials: Bins and Pins

thanks for sharing this as emails tend to become a flaw nowadays. The problem is though that the true spammers don’t care anyway – it’s the same when it comes to blog commenting. The rules might even annoy the honest reader and the spammers don’t care.

Welcome to Working Naked®

I left the corporate world over 20 years ago and have been working from home commute-free, boss-free, and annoying-co-worker-free ever since. On Working Naked® you’ll learn proven techniques to improve the way you work from home including, productivity tips, balancing your home and office life, home office design tips, and more.
—Lisa Kanarek